What was going on when I was born?

The Defense Department announced today that it would screen all prospective military recruits for possible exposure to the AIDS virus. Those who show signs of exposure in two separate blood tests will be rejected for military service. Dr. William E. Mayer, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, said at a news conference that the test was intended to protect new recruits from the dangers that routine smallpox vaccinations, which are required of all new enlistees, would pose for victims of AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Dr. Mayer said someone with AIDS, which leaves the body unable to resist disease, would have little defense against even the weak dose of smallpox virus in the vaccination.

After a decade of losing ground economically, American public school teachers are beginning to catch up. Their average salary is now $23,546, and in each of the last two years that average has risen more than 7 percent, twice the rate of inflation. The increases are being paid all across the scale, to the beginning teacher fresh out of college and to 25-year veterans. In some particularly wealthy suburbs, the most senior staff members get more than $50,000, a level that once could not have been achieved without leaving the classroom to be a principal or superintendent.

The Government index intended to predict the course of the economy rose four-tenths of 1 percent in July, the Commerce Department reported today. Analysts said this latest index of leading indicators, together with a substantial downward revision in the increase estimated for June, suggested continued listless economic growth over the next several months. The Commerce Department also reported a large $2.9 billion narrowing of the nation's merchandise trade deficit last month, a development that inspired widely different interpretations. [Page 33.] But most analysts said they thought nothing fundamental had occurred to lessen the nation's record trade deficits.

As recently as mid-June, Frank Lorenzo, the maverick chieftain of the Texas Air Corporation, had all but locked up control of Trans World Airlines, the nation's fourth-largest air carrier. Yet barely two months later, the prize that would have enabled him to build an airline empire suddenly was wrested away by a takeover financier, Carl C. Icahn. How Mr. Icahn, a man with a menacing reputation on Wall Street, pulled off such a coup is a tale of one of the most unusual alliances in the history of the high-stakes, frenetic takeover game. The key to his victory, it turned out, was the cooperation that two of T.W.A.'s major unions offered in return for winning control of their own destiny. Alliance Called a Benchmark The alliance already is being hailed as a benchmark in modern labor history, one that other unions in bitter acquisition contests are expected to emulate. In effect, the unions bargained with the bidder who guaranteed them the best deal.

Several key members of Congress, including Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader, and the Republican National Committee filed briefs in the Supreme Court today opposing the Reagan Administration in a major voting rights case. The brief from the lawmakers said the Administration had misstated the intent of the Voting Rights Act, which is facing its first major legal test since it was strengthened three years ago. Four Republicans and five Democrats joined Mr. Dole in signing the brief. In explaining the decision to file the brief, Republican officials said legislative districting that holds down black representation hurts Republican chances in elections in heavily Democratic states in the South. They also spoke of the need for the Republican Party to broaden its appeal to blacks by supporting their political goals.

The United States has urged South Africa to allow the outlawed African National Congress to take part in any discussions between the Government and black leaders on the country's future, State Department officials said today. It was the first time that the Administration had specifically said the congress should be included in negotiations. The South African Government, which banned the congress in 1960, has accused it of being a Communist organization dedicated to the forceful overthrow of the Government. There is no indication that the Government of President P. W. Botha is willing to deal with the congress.

Long stretches of the Gulf Coast stood abandoned today as people in beachfront communities and resorts from Gulf Shores, Ala., to Tampa Bay in Florida fled the approach of Hurricane Elena. Six-foot waves pounded beaches and the eastern Florida panhandle was battered with torrential rains that flooded roads and bridges as the storm, 350 miles wide and bearing winds up to 110 miles an hour, hovered in the Gulf of Mexico. [Gov. Bob Graham of Florida early Saturday ordered the immediate mandatory evacuation of low-lying coastal areas in 10 counties from Taylor County, southeast of Tallahassee, to Sarasota County, south of St. Petersburg, The Associated Press reported.The order is to be enforced by the police and other law enforcement personnel in the affected counties.] Storm Appears to Alter Course Forecasters for the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the center of the storm might now come ashore at midday Saturday somewhere on the 100-mile stretch of coast north of Tampa Bay.

Fifty years ago tonight, a Ukrainian miner named Aleksei G. Stakhanov hewed 102 tons of coal in a single shift, 14 times more than his norm, setting a Soviet record. His achievement was duly noted the next day in a paragraph in Pravda, and almost immediately Stakhanov became a national symbol. Within three months, on Nov. 22, 1935, Stalin was addressing the First All-Union Conference of Stakhanovites in Moscow, hailing the movement as conclusive evidence that Communism would triumph over capitalism. The Stakhanovite movement, Stalin declared, represented ''a model of that high productivity of labor that only socialism can produce and that capitalism cannot produce.''

President Reagan announced today that he had set up a special office to distribute $27 million in ''humanitarian assistance'' to the rebels who are seeking to overthrow the Nicaraguan Government. Mr. Reagan, in making the announcement, said the United States sought ''to support the democratic center against extremes of right and left'' in Nicaragua. White House aides said the office would operate as a separate body within the State Department, similar to the Agency for International Development. Officials said the State Department would replace the Central Intelligence Agency as the vehicle for channeling American aid to the Nicaraguan rebels.

Lagos was calm today and roadblocks were removed three days after a coup changed the Government.

Eight Philippine military men accused in the assassination of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. won an important legal victory today when the Supreme Court upheld the exclusion of key evidence against them. In a 10-to-3 decision, the court said the men - who include Gen. Fabian C. Ver, who is on leave as Chief of Staff of the armed forces - had not been advised of their rights when they testified last year before a fact-finding commission. The court said their potentially self-incriminating testimony was therefore inadmissible as evidence against them. General Ver's lawyer, Antonio Coronel, said he planned to move for the dismissal of the charges against the Chief of Staff, but would first wait to see whether the prosecution would appeal the Supreme Court ruling. It has 15 days to do so.

A passenger train derailed early today near this central French town and a freight train hit the wreckage, killing 36 people and injuring dozens, officials said. An official of the state-run railroad said it appeared the driver of the passenger train was going too fast when he passed through Argenton. Thirty-five bodies were pulled from the wreckage and another person died at a hospital, according to an official statement from the local government.